Each homicide costs a community an average of $8 million, according to reliable cost-of-crime studies. That bottom line includes obvious costs of crime: adjudication, coroners, medical costs and incarceration. Rand also figured in a factor for the intangible costs of victims' pain and suffering.

Rand research shows that one additional officer could reduce crime costs by $600,000 a year in Houston, Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Miami, Baltimore and Kansas City.

In the particularly understaffed police departments of Oakland and St. Louis, each additional officer could reduce crime costs by more than $1 million a year. In Flint, Mich., each additional officer could save $4 million a year in crime costs to the community.

So the next time someone says "I pay taxes. I pay your salary," it'll be appropriate to tell them that in the long run, it's cheaper for them to pay even more taxes, so more cops can be hired. :)

RyanNREMTP

11-26-2011, 07:56

That article is going to fall on deaf ears more than anything. It's sad though, most places need more officers on the streets.

Brucev

11-26-2011, 08:05

Good idea. Cutting essential services such as police and fire is a poor way to deal with budget issues. Better to cut less important areas or raise taxes if necessary.

ClydeG19

11-26-2011, 09:45

I've heard from a few cities/towns that want to hire more officers, but have a lack of qualified applicants. In some places, it's a financial problem and in others it's a talent pool problem.

Morris

11-26-2011, 11:40

I've heard from a few cities/towns that want to hire more officers, but have a lack of qualified applicants. In some places, it's a financial problem and in others it's a talent pool problem.

Has been a consistent challenge for us as well.

And no, taxes won't be raised in this deeply divided nation right now nor will leftists demand more cops on the streets. And citizens will continue to be caught in the crossfire.

CAcop

11-26-2011, 13:11

I've heard from a few cities/towns that want to hire more officers, but have a lack of qualified applicants. In some places, it's a financial problem and in others it's a talent pool problem.

We have a success rate of applicants of 3-4% for entry level and 10% for academy grads/laterals. That means for our current 6 openings and only testing laterals/academy grads we need to have 60 people apply. We get about 1/2 of that when we test. In the time it will take use to get the 6 we will loose about that many due to attrition. We have been trying to get to authorized levels of staffing for two years now.

I think the city likes it that way because they budget for X but they only have to pay X-5%. Then they can use that 5% as a savings account to spend on ther things throughout the year.

Also this city is very liberal and it gets a bad rep in LE. We had two cadidates for SJPD turn us down when we gave them job offers. Only one had a solid offer from another agency.

They also cut our pay to rediculous levels. Anyone who reads the fine print who is willing to relocate looks elsewhere.

Mayhem like Me

11-26-2011, 13:47

Good idea. Cutting essential services such as police and fire is a poor way to deal with budget issues. Better to cut less important areas or raise taxes if necessary.

Bruce I do agree with you on some things, as long as the police/Sheriff are not spending it on the flavor of the day social programs, if your community is affluent enough for the cops to babysit kids playing basketball you should have a real low violent crime index....

Unfortunately voter like parks and we see that politicians need to budget like they live I first pay for necessities , then for frills ,so a city should look at Police, Fire, med units and sanitation, then the rest can get in line after the important things are paid for.. Parks should be at the bottom in tough times.

So the next time someone says "I pay taxes. I pay your salary," it'll be appropriate to tell them that in the long run, it's cheaper for them to pay even more taxes, so more cops can be hired. :)

My Sgt. gave me this response to use when someone says that they pay taxes, or pay my salary. "If you pay my salary, your the one I need to talk to about a raise." I hate it when college students from another state say that. They don't pay for anything, let alone any tax within my state or city.

janice6

11-27-2011, 13:40

Good idea. Cutting essential services such as police and fire is a poor way to deal with budget issues. Better to cut less important areas or raise taxes if necessary.

I don't believe cutting essential services has anything to do with saving money. I firmly believe it is a local/federal politicians way of telling the voter that he will be punished for not giving them the money they want (not need).

If you (the voter) will not give us what we want, by god you can go without essential services and see what that's like.

(I cannot see any good argument for cutting essential services for any reason. That's what Government is for).

fastbolt

11-27-2011, 14:39

So, are they planning to pay them with the savings on future money saved by crimes averted?

If keeping LE employed is saving so much money, why are states, counties and municipalities having to lay off so many of them?

Probably due to budgets in the 'here & now'.

Essential services are ... well, essential, right?

Sometimes people may have strange ideas, or at least conflicting ideas, of what's an essential service, perhaps. Dunno.

I feel badly for the young cops who have been losing their jobs.

If I were a young person looking to enter LE nowadays, I'd give careful thought to the stability and funding of whatever government agency interested me before applying. Ditto the retirement system. I consider myself very fortunate indeed for my career choice in LE, since I didn't think of any of those things back then.